Charlotte, often known as a "banking city," is certainly not lacking in long-established fintech startups and their founders. But Charlotte's startup scene is more than just fintech. And when it comes to innovation, age is just a number, especially for today's younger generation who are positioned to succeed in a time when tech is all around us.
To highlight some of the Queen City's best and brightest young tech leaders, Charlotte Inno has compiled a list of the most promising and notable entrepreneurs and technologists who are 25 and under. They range from current students, to recent graduates; startup founders to those working their way up the ladder at global tech companies.
This year's list was cultivated based on community nominations and Inno's editorial selection process. Check them out below.
Adonis Abdullah, 21, founder, Hot Route Analytics
Abdullah, a current student at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, is the founder of Hot Route Analytics, a sports analytics firm that partners with small and medium sized university athletics programs to become their personal analytics team. He took the startup through UNCC's 49er Foundry Summer Accelerator where he was able to work on adapting the company's tech and business model to industry change caused by Covid-19. Abdullah also won UNCC's Ventureprise Idea Pitch in fall 2019 and was one of three undergraduate winners in the 49er Foundry and Student Entrepreneurs Showcase in spring 2020.
Miguel Avila, 25, UNCC's first Venture for America Fellow
Avila, a UNCC graduate, became the university's first Venture for America fellow when he was chosen for the prestigious program in 2018. Venture for America is selective, a two-year fellowship program for recent college graduates who want to pursue a career in entrepreneurship or a startup environment. Upon completion of the program, Avila began coaching college seniors in Charlotte and the surrounding area through the VFA application and interview process. He's led three workshops at UNCC to help ensure the university's students continue to be represented within the program. Prior to his participation in VFA, Avila co-founded and launched two companies -- Encapture Reality and Daily View Pools -- through the university's Ventureprise Launch NC Idea accelerator.
Aditya Bhujle, 18; Sahithi Meduri, 21; and Ivan Zaytsev, 22, co-founders, All-Vote
Bhujle, Meduri and Zaytsev are current UNCC students and co-founders of All-Vote (formerly Bridge), a platform that aims to engage citizens by providing them with resources to vote and encourages conversations with local elected officials. The team was one of three undergraduate winners of the 49er Foundry and Student Entrepreneurs Showcase in spring 2020 and also participated in UNCC's 49er Foundry Summer Accelerator, where they worked on finalizing the All-Vote platform. They're currently preparing a pilot launch to coincide with the 2020 General Election.
Marco Burgarello, 25, Head of Growth and co-founder, Bundle
Burgarello, a graduate of Grand Canyon University, is a founding partner and head of growth at Charlotte fintech startup Bundle. The startup was founded in 2019 and allows homebuyers to compare mortgage rates anonymously. As head of growth, Buergarello has designed a scaleable sales process that helped launch the pre-revenue company to solid, recurring revenue in just one year. Prior to co-founding Bundle, Burgarello worked as relationship manager for Queen City Fintech and a 2018 Venture for America Fellow and community partnership lead.
Chris Dyer, 25, co-founder, Undergrads
Dyer and his business partner Tom Mumford co-founded Undergrads, a residential, labor-only moving service operated by trained college students in 2017 while they were still attending Clemson University. The company began as a way for the pair to make extra money but quickly turned into a full-fledged business. Dyer, has been an integral part of the company's expansion from Greenville, S.C., to three additional cities -- Charleston and Columbia, in South Carolina, as well as Charlotte -- in under a year.
Samra Kanwal, 18, founder and CEO, Volunto
Kanwal, a sophomore at UNCC and a Levine Scholar, was one of only 20 students chosen out of thousands of applications to receive the university's full flagship scholarship. She is the founder of startup Volunto, which digitally facilitates and connects nonprofits in need with volunteers. The platform allows volunteers to donate technological skills, giving nonprofits the opportunity to grow and sustain operations. Kanwal's Volunto was chosen as part of the summer 2020 cohort for UNCC's Ventureprise Launch National Science Foundation I-Corps program, which provided the startup with $5,000 in NSF funding for prototype development, conference and customer interview travel and materials and supplies related to customer identification.
Jocelyn Keung, 25, founder and Executive Director, Fleurix; software engineer, Passport
Keung, a self-taught software engineer, pivoted to a career in tech after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in environmental sciences. After two years as a software engineer, Keung quickly realized that she was at a disadvantage as a woman in the industry, and in 2018 founded Fleurix, Charlotte's first tech conference geared toward women, non-binary people and allies. Her first conference, in March 2019, sold out with 400 attendees and another 200 on a wait-list. This year's conference, which was on track to double in size, was postponed due to Covid.
In addition to her work with Fleurix, Keung is a software engineer with Charlotte tech company Passport and is developing a new social venture called Everyday Asians that she hopes will serve as a platform to increase the visibility of the Asian population by sharing their stories and accomplishments.
Abby Kircher, 20, founder, Abby's Better
Kircher founded the health snack and nut butter company Abby's Better when she was just 15 after wanting to make a change in not only how she ate, but also how she treated her body overall. Kircher said she loves peanut butter but realized few store-bought brands contained all-natural ingredients, so she began making her own by mixing nuts and fruits. Abby's Better Nut Butter now offers a variety of flavors like Coconut Cashew, Date Pecan, Honey Almond, Coffee Almond and Pumpkin Spice Pecan. As the company took off, Kircher made the decision to forego college so she could focus on expanding the brand. Since 2018, Abby's Better has moved into its own manufacturing facility here in Charlotte, launched Abby's Better Snack Bites and can be found in more than 1,500 grocery stores on the East Coast and in the Midwest.
Jhillika Kumar, 21, and Conner Reinhardt, 23, co-founders, Mentra; AVPs of Accessible Technology, Bank of America
Kumar and Reinhardt, both Georgia Tech graduates, are co-founders of Mentra, a professional training and coaching startup aimed at finding employment for 100,000 neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals by 2025.
Kumar and Reinhardt attended the 2019 Grace Hopper Celebration, a female-focused tech conference where Kumar was the keynote speaker. It was during that event that the pair connected with their current employer at Bank of America. As Assistant Vice Presidents of Accessible Technology for BoA, they're working on initiatives that will ensure diversity and inclusion remain an integral part of the company's culture.
Brianna Maguire, 22, Associate Director of Customer Care, Carewell
Maguire, a Shepherd University graduate, has quickly climbed the ranks at health tech startup Carewell since starting there in June 2019. She began with the company, an e-commerce platform designed to improve the lives of family caregivers, as a content and community lead. After only eight months on the job, Maguire moved into a customer experience ops role in the customer care department. She said she knew immediately she'd found the right fit and threw herself into the work. Five months later, she was promoted to associate director of customer care where she's responsible for managing a growing CX team.
Maguire is also a 2019 Venture for America Fellow.
Adrian Mayans, 23, co-founder, Lucid Drone Technologies
Mayans helped co-found drone tech startup Lucid Drone in 2017 when he was a junior at Davidson College. Mayans, the startup's chief operating officer, pursued a philosophy degree at Davidson, which he said has given him the high-level problem solving skills needed to help run a successful tech company. He was part of the company's decision to pivot earlier this year from using its drones to clean building exteriors, to repurposing the tech to clean and sanitize inside surfaces of large office spaces, warehouses, schools and athletics stadiums to help combat the spread of Covid-19.
Thomas McCullough, 22, graduate researcher in cybersecurity, UNC-Charlotte
McCullough, a graduate student at UNCC, is currently conducting cybersecurity research at UNCC thanks to funding from the federal government. The research is focused on finding new ways to use innovative and emerging technology to protect Americans in cyberspace. He received a CyberCorps Federal Scholarship for Service that is awarded to graduate students who are training as the next generation of cybersecurity professionals for employment in the federal government. McCullough also spent the summer working as a cybersecurity professional for the federal government and assisted in the deployment of a new internal cybersecurity requirements framework while interning at Honeywell earlier this year.
Dezbee McDaniel, 25, co-founder and Head of Business Development, CliniSpan Health
McDaniel, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, is no stranger to startups and entrepreneurship and has a swath of tech gigs and fellowships under his belt, including Venture for American in 2017 and Forbes in 2018. In January 2020, McDaniel helped found Charlotte-based CliniSpan Health, which is a software platform that seeks to improve access to Covid-19 clinical trials for diverse populations. He is also the founder of marketing and advertising company Everywhere Ad and founder and principal of McDaniel Consulting Group, both based in the Raleigh-Durham area.
Sean Petersen, 24, Director of Analytics, Marketing & Operations, Tech Talent South
Petersen, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, began his tech career at Tech Talent South -- a woman-owned, tech education company that works to build and connect local entrepreneurial ecosystems -- as the company's product manager. In 2019, he was promoted to director of analytics, marketing and operations, where he focuses primarily on supporting data-driven strategy, process optimization and system management for the company's various recruitment and assessment tools. Petersen was also chosen as a 2017 Venture for America Fellow.
Pedro Regalado, 24, Researcher in wearable technology, UNCC
Regalado is currently enrolled at UNCC and working to complete his Ph.D in electrical, electronics and communications engineering. As a part of his doctorate program, Regalado is working on research related to wearable technology with a focus on mixed reality using the device Teleview. While participating in UNCC's Ventureprise Launch NSF I-Corps program, Regalado was able to use Teleview to determine a use case for connecting, interacting and sharing content in real-time with others from any location.
Jake Spradling, 24, co-founder and CEO, CargoLabs, Inc.
In 2019, Spradling helped found fintech startup CargoLabs in Leesburg, Va., but decided to relocated to Charlotte in February to participate in UNCC's Ventureprise Launch NC IDEA accelerator in the spring and Ventureprise Launch 2.0 accelerator this summer. CargoLabs calls itself fintech for truckers and is a platform built to provide data-driven supply chain management solutions for truckers, brokers and supply chain engineers. As a member of the Ventureprise programs, Spradling was able to launch a pilot platform.
Tori Tippin, 25, founder, CLT Cheese Chick; software engineer, Microsoft
Tippin, a University of Florida grad, entered Charlotte's tech scene in 2018 when she joined Red Ventures as a data analyst. She's also worked for CapTech Ventures and most recently Microsoft, where she is a software engineer. In 2019, Tippin founded CLT Cheese Chick, a cheese board company that helps cheese lovers embrace their inner "brieyonce." Using her background in data analytics, Tippin was able to grow her social media following to more than 4,800 Instagram users. All of the cheese, fruit and other accoutrements used in her cheese boards are sourced from local businesses and farmers. And for those interested in learning how to create their own cheese boards, Tippin often offers classes through Charlotte-based SkillPop.
Chrissy Whitty, 24, Commercial Banking Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Whitty, a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, has built a career with JPMorgan Chase over the last three years. She began as a summer analyst in New York City and was quickly hired full time as a commercial banking analyst at the bank's Charlotte Branch. Whitty works closely with the region's innovators to automate and simplify processes through technologies like APIs and digital payment processing, and maintains strong relationships with the area's top science and tech companies. Whitty also works closely with the venture capital community to help them optimize growth.
Additionally, Whitty created and leads a diversity and inclusion initiative called "Analysts Taking Action" that connects analysts across the country with senior leaders. The initiative aims to create a lasting dialog and provide transparency and opportunity for input and feedback related to continued D&I efforts.
